SOURCE: "Buddhism and Energy in the Recent Poetry of Gary Snyder," in Mosaic: A Journal for the Comparative Study of Literature and Ideas, Vol. XI, No. 1, Fall, 1977, pp. 117-25.

In the following essay, Almon explores the influence of Buddhist metaphysics on Snyder's work.

For all its attention to the physical world, the poetry of Gary Snyder has always had a metaphysical dimension. He once called poetry "a riprap (cobbled trail) over the slick rock of metaphysics," but metaphysics can also provide a trail over the slick rock of the poetry, providing a path where we might see only a difficult physical terrain. I will put aside the important matter of the influence of American Indian spirituality on Snyder's work and investigate the Buddhist context. Snyder's interest in Zen Buddhism is well-known: he is the poet who spent years in Japan studying it. While much of...